doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Holland Rebirth Project

That was my assumption but I just wanted to be sure. I had never seen these before. Are they impregnated with silicon or anything like that?

Very nice outcome with case. Hope the gun has same level of care and successful outcome. Regards,Mr W Martin

I’m not quite sure,but they wouldn’t have used silicone back then, I think the in and out of the oiled bores over the years would have contributed or perhaps they were soaked with Rangoon oil or something similar…I just don’t know

Thank you sir, I tried very hard to meet the level of workmanship on the case…I hope I don’t dissapoint

All best

I don’t believe the previous owner of the gun ever cleaned or oiled the piece himself….but maybe the heavy hand belonged to his butler

Searching for the correct blank was a real chore, I had a few fancy blanks but felt they were a bit out of place on a gun like this.
The advice from a knowledgeable source was to take the gun’s vintage into consideration, “nothing too overpowering”
A nice older French blank would have been just great, needed to be stable, have the correct grain structure and flow have good density and take well to the chisel…but where to find such a piece?
Then I remembered someone mentioned having picked up such a blank,
So all I needed to do was to coax it out of his stash.

After a couple of phone calls and a little horse trading James came through…he even delivered it.





I doesn’t look like much but It was a real nice blank... “ from Purdy’s 1965”was written on it, almost as old as me…. so old and stable. Not sure of its origin maybe James can tell us how he came by it

PS:not sure I’m that stable these days

Happy to add to the story Claudio.

I used to maintain a correspondence with an old time member here. Robert Chambers. I found him to be extremely knowledgeable about certain areas of the vintage gun world but polarizing and not the right temperament to thrive in a forum like this. I happened to be conversing with him in the summer of 2020 and he mentioned he would like to sell a few blanks he had. His eyesight was failing and the time for him to utilize some nice blanks was over.

Sight unseen I bought one of them. I should have bought all of them. He told me that he had had the blank for at least 25 years and that the person he acquired it from had shown him a receipt from Purdey’s for the blank dated in the mid 1960s. It’s all hearsay at this point but that’s the story I got.

The blank arrived and I thought it was lovely but understated. I had recently picked up some other, more “in your face” blanks and so this one was just sitting waiting for the right project.

Claudio called me one day as he knew I had acquired a few blanks. Told me about the project and asked if any of them might make sense. I told him about this blank and he was interested. Now it’s always both entertaining and informative to spend time in Claudio’s workshop so it didn’t take much to get me in my car and making the drive over to his shop.

I didn’t see it again until the gun was finished and my jaw dropped. I had seriously underestimated this blank. It has depth to it like I have never seen before. I feel,like I can see into it.

And it doesn’t hurt that I did Claudio “a solid”. Pretty sure that will work out for me one day. 🤣

So, to set matters right, the gun is finished already and this is just a historical accounting thread?
JR

Pretty hard to make an entertaining thread in real time when the process can take years, John. I’m sure you understand that.

Sooooo, can we see pictures of the gun?????